Sound designer and mix engineer Jordan Stalling has come aboard the staff of Chicago-based Another Country. He joins a company roster of mixers which includes managing director John Binder, Peter Erazmus, Drew Weir and Erik Widmark. Tim Konn is Another Country’s EP.
Stalling spent the previous six years with Comma Music, where he began as an assistant engineer and rose to the sound designer/mixer position in 2018. Winner of “The Lev” International Grand Prize in Sound Design in the Camp Kuleshov competition in both 2016 and 2017, Stalling has distinguished himself professionally through his considerable talents spanning audio engineering and music composition.
With recent credits on campaigns for the Chicago Bulls, Cracker Barrel, Keystone Light, and WeatherTech, Stalling has had his original sound designs and mixes also featured in Potluck Creative’s “Super Hero” series of stop-motion videos for Revolution Brewing. He studied Sound Design for Film at Flashpoint Chicago after earning his B.S. in Business Management from Eastern Illinois University.
“Another Country has enjoyed many first place wins since the inception of the Camp Kuleshov Awards,” said Binder. “Over the past few years, Jordan took the top slot… and I’ve been a big admirer of his work ever since. With his strong musical sense, Jordan’s intrinsic understanding of timing, rhythm and even silence sets his work apart.”
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More